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Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 25, 2015 22:18:22 GMT -5
Yeah, berk, that's what I remember too.
I really like the Him storyline - rewritten as it is, I think the pacing and plot are quite suspenseful, even if they're not superhero traditional.
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Post by berkley on Mar 25, 2015 23:08:56 GMT -5
Yeah, berk, that's what I remember too. I really like the Him storyline - rewritten as it is, I think the pacing and plot are quite suspenseful, even if they're not superhero traditional. Me too, though I'd love to see Kirby's original story. I also love Kirby's visualisation of "Him": there's something timeless about that impassive golden humanoid with the Roman-soldier haircut. I love the Starlin Warlock, but some smart writer and artist should go back to that original Kirby imagery some time. I find it even more striking than the Warlock version - was that a Gil Kane design? - which is quite good itself.
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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 26, 2015 6:24:09 GMT -5
Having picked up a bunch of All-Star Squardons recently, I'm reading issues 1-10 of that series. Great stuff! I feel like I'm getting two history lessons, one in WWII and one in Golden Age superheroes. Plus, the art is excellent. I actually think I like a little better when Adrian Gonzalez takes over for Jerry Ordway. They're both great, though.
I'm also reading Englehart's run on Captain America on my Kindle thanks to Marvel Unlimited. It's OK so far, I think it will take off later.
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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 26, 2015 6:30:37 GMT -5
Last time I was at the library, I checked out: The Essential Fantastic Four, Volume Four, reprinting FF #64 to #83 and Annuals #5 and #6. I used to have all these issues (mid- to lower grade-copies were reasonably priced in the 1990s) but I sold them for my master's degree. So I haven't read them in a long time. And some of these issues I probably haven't read since the time that I bought them because there's a few stores mixed in there that I wasn't too fond of. I read #66 and #67 over the last two nights, and that's the famed Him story. He's the character that became Adam Warlock. As much as I enjoyed Adam Warlock in the 1970s, I was never impressed with the original storyline, so I don't think I ever read it again after I bought it and packed it away in the 1990s. Which makes it a lot more fun to read now because it's almost brand new! I had fun reading it over the last two nights. Goofy Silver Age plotting, the Thing is a non-stop whinger and Johnny and Crystal almost make you want to puke because they're so adorable! And the scientists of the Beehive - Morlak, Shinski, Zota and Hamilton (what the heck kind of a name is Hamilton!?!?!) - are a bunch of nuts! Flipping through the volume, I was reminded of one of the main reasons I don't like some of the stories in this era of FF - Psycho-Man! He's terrible! But there's also a lot of great stories here and tonight I'll be starting a multi-part story featuring the Mad Thinker which I remember as being pretty good. That sounds like fun, reading those for the first time in so long! I read through pretty much all of the Adam Warlock stories via Marvel Unlimited a year or so ago, starting with these, and, yeah, this is quite a bit different than the Warlock we all know and love. This guy's gone through several significant changes in his relatively short existence. I think I'll take Starlin's version!
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 26, 2015 9:57:18 GMT -5
Having picked up a bunch of All-Star Squardons recently, I'm reading issues 1-10 of that series. Great stuff! I feel like I'm getting two history lessons, one in WWII and one in Golden Age superheroes. Plus, the art is excellent. I actually think I like a little better when Adrian Gonzalez takes over for Jerry Ordway. They're both great, though. I'm also reading Englehart's run on Captain America on my Kindle thanks to Marvel Unlimited. It's OK so far, I think it will take off later. I started reading All-Star Squadron with #7 and it was one of my favorite comics all the way up until the Crisis on Infinite Earths messed it up so badly. I came to love that core group of Liberty Belle, Johnny Quick, Firebrand, Steel, Robotman and the Shining Knight. And I liked Roy Thomas's day-by-day approach to the telling of World War II. I took five years to get from December 1941 to the late spring of 1942! At that pace, I'm not sure he'd have reached VJ-Day by 2015 if the series had kept going until now!
Steve Englehart was no longer writing Captain America when I started reading it in 1976 but I acquired quite a few of those issues from used-book stores (usually 2 for 25 cents) later in the 1970s. They were great, especially with that Sal Buscema art and villains like the Serpent Squad, the Yellow Claw and the crazy anti-Commie Cap of the 1950s.
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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 26, 2015 13:16:15 GMT -5
Having picked up a bunch of All-Star Squardons recently, I'm reading issues 1-10 of that series. Great stuff! I feel like I'm getting two history lessons, one in WWII and one in Golden Age superheroes. Plus, the art is excellent. I actually think I like a little better when Adrian Gonzalez takes over for Jerry Ordway. They're both great, though. I'm also reading Englehart's run on Captain America on my Kindle thanks to Marvel Unlimited. It's OK so far, I think it will take off later. I started reading All-Star Squadron with #7 and it was one of my favorite comics all the way up until the Crisis on Infinite Earths messed it up so badly. I came to love that core group of Liberty Belle, Johnny Quick, Firebrand, Steel, Robotman and the Shining Knight. And I liked Roy Thomas's day-by-day approach to the telling of World War II. I took five years to get from December 1941 to the late spring of 1942! At that pace, I'm not sure he'd have reached VJ-Day by 2015 if the series had kept going until now!
Steve Englehart was no longer writing Captain America when I started reading it in 1976 but I acquired quite a few of those issues from used-book stores (usually 2 for 25 cents) later in the 1970s. They were great, especially with that Sal Buscema art and villains like the Serpent Squad, the Yellow Claw and the crazy anti-Commie Cap of the 1950s.
I agree that All-Star Squadron was excellent until Crisis on Infinite Earths killed it. Like you, I love how Roy was going almost day by day, walking us through World War II. It was like a walk through history. I had wondered how long it would take to get through WWII at that rate. Maybe you're right, Roy would still be writing it! I just finished the Yellow Claw story, and the Serpent Squad was just before that!
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 26, 2015 15:15:31 GMT -5
I was OK with the Alicia thing - as far as I remember, they wanted to make use of her artistic talents as a sculptor in their quest to design the perfect man or something? Yeah, doesn't make a huge amount of sense according to real-world logic, but it's the kind of that happened in comics back then all the time, so I just accept it. I could let the Alicia thing slide because the Silver Age is full of goofy stuff like that. But the whole story is off to me. FOr most of those two issues, Alicia is hanging out with the weird scientists at their facility, the FF is playing house, dealing with Ben's non-stop diva mode, then trying to come up with a way to follow Alicia to the "Beehive" facility. When they get there, it's wrapped up in three pages.
And I also am unsatisfied with the way it's tied up. The FF barely escape in time, and the weird scientists are left to die at the facility along with the workers and technicians who had been employed at the facility by the scientists. I had fun re-reading it this week, but I very quickly started remembering why it's not one of my favorites.
Following FF #44 to #65 would be difficult under the best of circumstances, but #66 and #67 doesn't even come close. And then there's a multi-part storyline with the Mad Thinker that I remember as being pretty good! (I think it might be the first Mad Thinker story I ever read because I read them when I was first reading comics and they were reprinted in World's Greatest Comics.)
P.S. I believe it later turned out that Morlak, Zota and Shinski survived. They were in a Hulk annual in the late 1970s. (I also seem to recall that it wasn't very good.)
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Post by gothos on Mar 26, 2015 15:24:26 GMT -5
I was OK with the Alicia thing - as far as I remember, they wanted to make use of her artistic talents as a sculptor in their quest to design the perfect man or something? Yeah, doesn't make a huge amount of sense according to real-world logic, but it's the kind of that happened in comics back then all the time, so I just accept it. I could let the Alicia thing slide because the Silver Age is full of goofy stuff like that. But the whole story is off to me. FOr most of those two issues, Alicia is hanging out with the weird scientists at their facility, the FF is playing house, dealing with Ben's non-stop diva mode, then trying to come up with a way to follow Alicia to the "Beehive" facility. When they get there, it's wrapped up in three pages.
And I also am unsatisfied with the way it's tied up. The FF barely escape in time, and the weird scientists are left to die at the facility along with the workers and technicians who had been employed at the facility by the scientists. I had fun re-reading it this week, but I very quickly started remembering why it's not one of my favorites.
Following FF #44 to #65 would be difficult under the best of circumstances, but #66 and #67 doesn't even come close. And then there's a multi-part storyline with the Mad Thinker that I remember as being pretty good! (I think it might be the first Mad Thinker story I ever read because I read them when I was first reading comics and they were reprinted in World's Greatest Comics.)
P.S. I believe it later turned out that Morlak, Zota and Shinski survived. They were in a Hulk annual in the late 1970s. (I also seem to recall that it wasn't very good.)
Kirby could do some awesomely tight plotting, but a lot of times he resorted to flying by the seat of his pants. On the Him two-parter, he seems to be more interested in the slow buildup than the actual pay-off-- which is at least part of the reason for the hurry-up-and-finish ending.
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Post by berkley on Mar 26, 2015 16:46:57 GMT -5
My guess is that it was a story Kirby wanted to tell and he stuck it into the FF book for lack of anywhere else to tell it. It doesn't really need the FF - hence the less than convincing manner in which they're brought in via Alicia and their general irrelevance to the main action.
Might have made a good 2 or 3-parter for something like his 2001 series if he'd had a forum like that at the time - an anthology series where he could tell almost any kind of SF story he wanted..
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Post by DE Sinclair on Mar 27, 2015 11:28:09 GMT -5
I was OK with the Alicia thing - as far as I remember, they wanted to make use of her artistic talents as a sculptor in their quest to design the perfect man or something? Yeah, doesn't make a huge amount of sense according to real-world logic, but it's the kind of that happened in comics back then all the time, so I just accept it. Actually the reason they wanted Alicia was a bit different. She wasn't brought in to help with the design, because Him was already done at that point. The problem was he glowed really brightly, so they didn't know what he looked like. They wanted her to sculpt a statue so they could see if he was hot or not. Yes, I realize your reason sounded much better than what saw print. Here's the panel from FF #66:
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 27, 2015 11:56:42 GMT -5
I was OK with the Alicia thing - as far as I remember, they wanted to make use of her artistic talents as a sculptor in their quest to design the perfect man or something? Yeah, doesn't make a huge amount of sense according to real-world logic, but it's the kind of that happened in comics back then all the time, so I just accept it. Actually the reason they wanted Alicia was a bit different. She wasn't brought in to help with the design, because Him was already done at that point. The problem was he glowed really brightly, so they didn't know what he looked like. They wanted her to sculpt a statue so they could see if he was hot or not. Yes, I realize your reason sounded much better than what saw print. Here's the panel from FF #66:
The more I think about, I like the stupider explanation better because it makes it whackier and whackier.
GEEZ! What is up with Morlak's giant head? He looks like one of the buttheads from the "Captain Pike" episode of Star Trek.
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Post by fanboystranger on Mar 27, 2015 12:01:22 GMT -5
P.S. I believe it later turned out that Morlak, Zota and Shinski survived. They were in a Hulk annual in the late 1970s. (I also seem to recall that it wasn't very good.)
They did. They'd turn up quite a bit in the '80s in Avengers, including the issues where Jean Grey comes back from the dead. Always liked them. Totally goofy mad scientists that roll over when any pressure is applied.
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 27, 2015 12:35:29 GMT -5
P.S. I believe it later turned out that Morlak, Zota and Shinski survived. They were in a Hulk annual in the late 1970s. (I also seem to recall that it wasn't very good.)
They did. They'd turn up quite a bit in the '80s in Avengers, including the issues where Jean Grey comes back from the dead. Always liked them. Totally goofy mad scientists that roll over when any pressure is applied. You know, comic companies never throw out any established characters. Not even the bad mad scientists .
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Post by Deleted on Mar 29, 2015 0:32:34 GMT -5
Read the 8 issues of the Starfire series from DC released in the mid 70s, labelled as swords and science it was a fun series, a solid read despite the fact there were 4 writers int he 8 issue run (Michelinie for the first 2, Conway for 3, Englehart for 2 and Tom DeFalco for the last issue, but the art tea stayed consistent throughout (Vosburg and Colletta). Another of those short lived DC series that ended before the story finished unfortunately, and another character Michelinie gave a later nod to nod to as an Eternal Champion when he wrote Star Hunters. WOuld have been interesting to see where this went if Michelinie had stayed on the book, but the Englehart 2-parter was also very interesting The Conway issues were solid, but the DeFalco ish felt a bit rushed, and would have been a transition issue had the series continued I think.
Also reread for the first time in probably 20 years Marvel Graphic Novel #3 Dreadstar by Jim Starlin. I had started rereading the Starlin Metamorphosis Odyssey epic when Shax did his review thread of the Epic installments, but then had put it down as other things took precedence. I reread The PRice at the beginning of the month for RaGN week and was feeling the need for some Starlin space saga so picked up the GN off the shelf tonight and read it. This stuff still stand sup for me!
-M
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Post by Deleted on Mar 29, 2015 2:07:04 GMT -5
I'm blazing through the second Usagi Yojimbo Saga book, which is approaching modern by the forum standards, but still classic, just barely. When I bought the big Fantagraphics set it was mostly material I had read before, having only failed to track down a couple issues of the Fantagraphics run prior to that. I found out that I had even read the anthology stuff somewhere, maybe I got my hands on a trade at some point. The first Saga book was probably about half new material and half stuff I had read. It was nice filling gaps in the story, but this second volume is all new material to me. Just read Grasscutter for the first time. I'm really enjoying the book, and can't wait for the next. By the scheduled releases I should be caught up with the series fairly quickly. I've been following in floppy for the past several years.
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